Don’t drop it! Inside an astronaut’s tool bag

It made an expensive shooting star: the contents of the bag were valued at $100,000. So what kind of instruments do astronauts use, and why are they so expensive?

Washer extraction tool

In the run up to the final Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, an onboard camera and a spectrograph – a device to measure the properties of light across a small area of the electromagnetic spectrum – on the telescope both suffered power failures.

Instead of simply replacing the faulty parts, NASA decided to attempt a repair.

This is one of the tools in the astronauts' tool kit. It was used to remove washers from the spectrograph's casing so the space walkers could access its circuitry.

Threading the washers onto its long aluminium needle prevented them from floating away.

Its flower-like head is designed to be easily gripped by a gloved hand, and the ring at the bottom allows it to be tethered to a spacesuit when not in use.